FISCAL NOTES: STATE ECONOMY DEPENDS ON WOMEN’S SUCCESS

(AUSTIN) — In the June/July issue of Fiscal Notes, released today, the Comptroller’s office profiles the results of a study completed for Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s Good for Texas Tour: Women in the Workforce Edition.

Women hold nearly half of the jobs in Texas, and every dollar they earn supports about $2 in wages throughout the state.

“Women are not just workers, they’re entrepreneurs and, increasingly, corporate leaders,” Hegar said. “In the last 20 years, Texas women have started businesses at a greater rate than in the nation as a whole, and today they own nearly a million Texas businesses, despite hurdles such as difficulties in finding startup capital.” The number of businesses owned by Texas women rose by 146 percent in the last 20 years, outpacing growth at the national level. Today, they own nearly 939,000 businesses. While many of these are one-person companies, women-owned businesses also employ more than 808,000 Texans other than their owners. In all, companies owned by Texas women generated about $134.2 million in sales in 2017.

Yet female entrepreneurs continue to face a variety of challenges, including a lack of access to capital. A recent report by the National Women’s Business Council found that women start their businesses with an average of $75,000 in capital — about 56 percent of that available to male business owners ($135,000). Women account for more than half of Texas’ 2.1 million government jobs. They generate additional business activities that support about 2.2 million other Texas jobs. In 2017, women held 77 percent or 1.3 million of the state’s 1.6 million jobs in the education and health services — the highest share of female employment among all sectors in Texas. These women’s business activities support nearly 1.2 million additional Texas jobs.”

June/July Fiscal Notes also looks at the state contracting process. As of last December, state government was managing contracts worth more than $250 billion. In recent years, some high-profile failures in this process have spurred the Legislature to make important reforms.

Fiscal Notes is available online and also can be received by subscribing via the Comptroller’s website.

Fiscal Notes helps promote and further explain the Comptroller’s constitutional responsibility to monitor the state’s economy and estimate state government revenues. It has been published since 1975, featuring in-depth analysis concerning state finances and original research by subject-matter experts in the Comptroller’s office.